How I negotiated my startup compensation (with numbers)

1) You are intertwining your MARRIAGE with work. Rule #1 is don't shit where you eat.

2) You make matters worse because your husband is your boss. This will screw up the relationship dynamic, and that's not necessarily a guess, Im 99% certain it will be hard to separate, especially with longer start-up hours. Good luck, you'll need it.

3) You are putting all of your eggs in one basket. Sure its convienent, but if the start up fails, you are BOTH out of work.

4) Putting all of this on the company blog, with screenshots of e-mail correspondence and even prices is very strange, and either you don't know what you're compromising by doing this or it is a veiled attempt at advertising compensation packages on HN.

Generally, I don't think you or your husband's strategy will play well for either one of you in the long run. Others have said your finances will be joint, so why does it even matter what you get?

Seriously, this is really weird. I'm sure you're confident it will work, but I know first hand that mixing friendship (and in your case MARRIAGE, jesus) with work is dangerous and rarely ends well.

Good luck. My opinion is you both have made a very big mistake.

Every time I encounter a conversation about healthcare in the US, all I do now is ask if the other party has ever tried to purchase private coverage for their family on the open market. You have no standing to discuss the true situation in this country until you have.

I did it 7 years ago and it was hell. Absolute hell. I can only imagine it's gotten worse since then.

To add a data point, I dug out the medical rate information from my offer package three years ago. The Family PPO premium was $17,000 annually, of which I paid $9600. The Family PPO with $5K HSA was $12,500 to my employer, $5000 of which I would have had to pay. At the time I was easily consuming $5K+ of services for my children, and I had awful experiences with a previous HSA, so the normal PPO was my choice. The rates have jumped 30% since then, and my employer has absorbed most of the jump.

We still might rent a house as an office eventually, and cofounder T is moving to LAH, and I'm moving to Menlo Park, later this year. But at that point I'd rather get a light industrial building ($1-1.50/ft2) in Mountain View or Menlo or EPA or similar, build it out to spec, and use that as the office. A wall, roller gate, parking, onsite generator(s), RF tower, etc. would be awesome, along with 3-phase power, and being a bit more legitimate than using a house, long-term.

We had some confusion about SF vs. Peninsula for startups, but the "the lower on the stack you are, the closer to San Jose you should be" seems true, even in 2012 -- all the great people we've talked to are in PA or more south (all the way to Cupertino).

Excellent. There are two parts to budgeting, you mention the first one which is understanding where your money is going, the second part is prioritizing where your money should be going. Part of the latter is understanding what is (and what is not) withing your means.

So if you are making $70K and you're hanging out socially with people making twice that, you are going to be at a disadvantage in 'expensive' activities. Someone with $100K in income which is taking home over $1K/month more than you after taxes, might decide they are going to spend $500 a month on track time at the local race track (driving fast is very fun of course) that is way too expensive for someone who is only making $70K. As a person budgeting you always ask "Is this valuable, or is it expensive?" [1] understanding the difference can really help clarify what you want to spend money on.

But lets think about the social aspects for a minute. Young people especially (although it is present across age groups) have a tendency to 'brag' either subtly or not so subtly using money. Called 'conspicuous consumption' back in the day, you can recognize these people right away, they always have the latest tech gadget, or a car that is less than 2 yrs old, or this seasons fashion accessories, etc. Why they are like that varies but how it affects you the $70K earner, and more importantly your budget, is key. You have to resist giving into that way of validating yourself and your friendships and instead actively pursue other paths. So if you're budget is being warped by those kinds of influences you might seek out ways to avoid them. It is tough since nobody likes to say "I can't afford to do that stuff that you are doing every day" even when its the truth. However good friends will figure it out and adapt.

Under no circumstances pretend you are something you aren't, I knew a guy in the dot com days who was pretending to be a lot more well off than he was in order to 'hang out' with some actually wealthy people. He got the bar tab once at one of their events, it was a bit over $12,000. He had to call AmEx to get them to approve it. I personally would not think the access was worth that sort of shock to the budget but recognize different people value different things way more differently than I.

[1] One of the engineers here at the office who has a background in economics introduced me to that phrase and it really captures the essence of budget prioritization.